1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an accessory for a clothes dryer, which is installed to clothes that will be dried in the clothes dryer and which serves not only to smooth out wrinkles in the clothes, but also to pleat the clothes.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
In general, a dryer is a home appliance that typically dries a completely washed laundry, i.e. an object to be dried, using hot air.
Dryers may be classified, based on an air heating method, i.e. based on heating means, into an electric dryer and a gas dryer. The electric dryer is designed to heat air using electric resistance heat generated from an electric heater, and the gas dryer is designed to heat air using heat generated by combustion of gas within a gas burner.
Alternatively, dryers may be classified into a condensing (circulating) dryer and an exhaust dryer. In the condensing dryer, wet air, which has been generated via heat exchange with an object to be dried within a drum, is circulated within the dryer rather than being discharged outward, and then is heat exchanged with outside air within a condenser to generate condensed water to be discharged outward. In the exhaust dryer, wet air, which has been generated via heat exchange with an object to be dried within a drum, is directly discharged outward from the dryer.
Further, dryers may be classified into a top loading dryer and a front loading dryer based on a method for putting an object to be dried into the dryer. The top loading dryer is configured such that an object to be dried is put from the top of the dryer, and the front loading dryer is configured such that an object to be dried is put from the front of the dryer.
Furthermore, dryers may be classified into a drum type dryer and a cabinet type dryer. The present invention refers to an accessory for use in the cabinet type dryer, and a description of the drum type dryer will be omitted hereinafter.
There is Korean Registered Patent Application No. 10-2007-0018389 (entitled “DRYER AND CONTROL METHOD THEREOF”) in relation to the cabinet type dryer.
Considering the aforementioned related art with reference to FIG. 1, the dryer includes a cabinet 10 in which an object to be dried is accommodated, a low-temperature air generating unit (not shown) which generates relatively low-temperature air to be supplied into the cabinet in order to dry the object to be dried; and a path (not shown) through which the relatively low-temperature air generated by the low-temperature air generating unit is supplied into the cabinet. The dryer preferably further includes a moisture ejection unit (not shown) to supply moisture into the cabinet. Differently from the drum type dryer, clothes accommodated in the cabinet remain stationary. To this end, a supporting member 5, on which clothes hangers are supported, is preferably provided inside the cabinet.
With the above-described related art, the supporting member 5 may prevent friction between the cabinet and the clothes and between the clothes during drying of the clothes. Moreover, the moisture ejection unit (not shown) may serve to smooth out the creases, wrinkles and folded lines (hereinafter referred to as the generic term “wrinkles”) in the clothes to be dried.
However, the above-described conventional dryer has the following problems.
Firstly, although using the moisture ejection unit may effectively smooth out the wrinkles to some extent, completely smoothing out the wrinkles in the clothes is impossible. Thus, it is necessary for a user to iron out the wrinkles in the clothes.
Secondly, in the case of clothes that are impossible to iron, completely smoothing out the wrinkles in the clothes is impossible.